Architecture, Landscape, and the Development of Community Identity: St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Cahaba, Alabama, USA

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Leaders of religious institutions created cultural landscapes that materially expressed their ideologies, identities, goals, and power. Decisions related to structure location, architectural style, and overall visual appearance were not random. Rather, they were well-thought-out and deliberate choices made by religious leaders for the benefit of their respective religious organization, their communities, and even themselves personally.

Through its Gothic Revival architecture, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church (1854) in Cahaba, Alabama, materially expressed the religious, social, and cultural ideologies of its white parishioners, the Protestant Episcopal Church, and of the booming antebellum town itself. Furthermore, its strategic placement on the landscape magnified its visual appearance from both land and water. These deliberate architectural and landscape decisions by St. Luke’s leaders aided in unifying its white parishioners and other townspeople, which strengthened their common identities. Additionally, I explore an unintentional consequence of their decisions: the strengthening of the Cahaba’s enslaved Black community’s identity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow